


Patricide Can Be Cathartic

by TheJudicator (EmperorsVornskr)



Series: Tumblr Prompts [9]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Blood and Gore, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Catharsis, Child Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mental Link, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Patricide, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Armitage Hux, Transphobia, Violence, Young Armitage Hux, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23877073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmperorsVornskr/pseuds/TheJudicator
Summary: Hux has one of his recurring nightmares, and Kylo helps him break free of a stagnant pattern in order to gain catharsis, and console his inner child that has needed comfort and healing for decades.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Tumblr Prompts [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677616
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50





	Patricide Can Be Cathartic

**Author's Note:**

> I'd been planning on writing something of this nature for a while for my own personal reasons, but this post by eventidecreative just spurred me on to write it, because I really needed the catharsis of my own as someone who's suffered multiple forms of child abuse myself. 
> 
> https://eventidecreative.tumblr.com/post/612448075459543040
> 
> Warning, this gets into some dark triggers- heed the tags. The rape/non con is only mentioned, not described or detailed, and is between Brendol and Hux's mother.

He was having the nightmares again. 

Kylo was woken by Hux’s shrill scream in the warm dark of his room, by a flailing bony knee, by his long dexterous fingers gripping his shoulder hard enough for short well groomed nails to break skin, causing crescents of blood to form. 

It was the scream that always unnerved Kylo. 

He’d seen gore, death, blood, ruins of human and alien bodies alike twisted by torture, destruction of temples and cities, but nothing chilled him more than the screams Hux made in his sleep. They weren’t screams of fear, or of physical pain. They were screams, wails of open wounds that refused to heal, wounds inflicted deep in the psyche, and festering deep in the mind. 

Kylo suspected from whispers around the ship, from thoughts of older officers, rumours from younger troopers, even from the tightly controlled, but protective thoughts of Phasma that Hux had been abused by his father for years. 

It wasn’t until he met Grand Admiral Rae Sloane- with Hux in the same room- for the first time, did he get confirmation. Sloane’s mind was even more orderly, even more controlled and powerful than Hux’s, but every thought that radiated from her mind was protective, suspicious, and full of love. She was protective of Hux, suspicious of Kylo, and the love for her adopted son was apparent. 

_He’s been through enough, and I won’t have him hurt again. I’ve done too much for him to see him fall._

The thought radiating from her actually _stung_ Kylo’s mind, and he made note never to cross this woman- she wasn’t a Force user, but he didn’t doubt for a second that she had connections that could tear down the First Order with a single tug, and she would in an instant if it meant protecting what was important to her. 

Her love couldn’t fix what was broken, couldn’t heal festering wounds in a mind that teetered on a precarious edge that constantly threatened to fall into the abyss. 

Kylo wrapped his arms around Hux, ignoring the nails in his skin- he’d suffered worse. He did stiffen and wince when Hux clamped his teeth into the soft spot between shoulder and neck, teeth breaking skin as he let out another muffled scream. 

Hux’s mind had always been an enigma to him- he could read his thoughts when he opened his mind and allowed himself to be read, but at other times, he might as well have had a doonium wall built around his mind, as Kylo couldn’t get into it, no matter how hard he tried. 

It was the result of years, decades of compartmentalising his mental pain, his dysphoria, his abuse, locking it away and putting on a blank mask of calm control while his mind fought itself. It was the result of swallowing abuse from not just his father, but his father’s allies and friends, from his own foes, and from himself when he had low points of believing he deserved all of it. 

“Armitage,” Kylo murmured, stroking Hux’s hair, pulling him close as the other man cried, stuck, locked in whatever nightmare had him in its clutches. Kylo rocked him, unsure what to do. 

He wasn’t good at this- at soft things, at reassurance. His own father wasn’t entirely good at it, and had left most of it to his mother- and Kylo had long pushed such tenderness from his mind. He didn’t know how to approach this, how to calm or soothe Hux, not when he couldn’t wake him from his night terror. 

Then Kylo felt it- the sudden crack in Hux’s mental defences, and he dove into it. They’d gotten to the point where Kylo didn’t dig into Hux’s head without permission- and unless Hux had opened his mind to him- but the situation was dire. Armitage Hux was trapped in whatever horror that gripped his mind, and Kylo wasn’t going to let him go it alone. 

He was pulled in almost immediately, and found himself staring at a young, scrawny red-haired boy with a black eye, bloody nose, and tear-stained cheeks. In front of him, stood a fat older man with a patchy beard, thinning rust-coloured hair, and an ill-fitting uniform that could only be Brendol Hux. So the child was Armitage. 

Young Armitage was on his knees, wiping his bloody nose with gloved hand, his gaze on the ground in front of him. He couldn’t have been older than ten. Brendol seethed with rage, and his fists were clenched. It was obvious the man had just hit his own son. 

“I did what you asked, I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Armitage said softly. 

_I don’t know why you always hit me when you know your words hurt me more than anything else you could do to me._

“You were supposed to succeed, not outdo the other officer’s sons and humiliate them, now the Admirals are furious with me that you, a useless slip of flimsy, made their sons look bad!” Brendol roared. 

_I do badly to make the others look good, and I fail you. I succeed, and I ruin your social aspects._

“Maybe it would be better if I were never born,” Armitage whispered, wiping futilely at the blood tears and snot on his bruised face. 

Brendol seized his son by the front of his tunic and hauled him up.

“A little late for that now, whelp,” he growled into his child’s face. “You quit on me now and it will only ruin me further than your incompetence already has. Even then, I wouldn’t let you have the death you wanted- I’d only tell them you died at the hands of one of their sons. Suicide is a coward’s way out, you whomp-rat! What kind of legacy would I have if you went and offed yourself?”

“You don’t care about your legacy, or you wouldn’t want me to fail!” Armitage cried, struggling to gain purchase, his feet kicking, hands grasping at Brendol’s meaty fists. 

_You only care about the fact that Mother would kill you slowly over a period of months, if not years, if you killed me, or if you drove me to suicide, and that would be the only consolation in dying aside from being free of you._

Kylo realised he wasn’t hearing the thoughts of ten-year-old Armitage, but the thirty-three-year-old Armitage who was behind the struggling pair in a cage. His gloved hands gripped the doonium bars, his teeth gritted as he pressed his face in the gap between bars. Tears ran down his face as he struggled, seeking to escape, to save the boy he’d once been. 

Kylo himself found he couldn’t move. He was not caged, but he couldn’t move any of his limbs- this was Hux’s nightmare, and there were unseen, unspoken rules, and he couldn’t intervene. 

“You failed me by being born with a cunt and being good for nothing than breeding stock! You failed me by not even growing out enough to fool the others that there might be a boy under that uniform! You failed me before you were even born! Your whore mother failed me by getting knocked up! If I’d known she was going to saddle me with you, I never would have shoved her against the counter and given her the attention she didn’t deserve!” Brendol screamed, flecks of sputum flying from his mouth. 

Kylo froze. The implications of his words, of Hux’s conception, were they-

_Every time. Every time you rub it in my face I was unwanted. The progeny of violation, the child of rape, the offspring of a horrible man overpowering someone a third his size. Every time, you make it my fault, and every time, I know what follows._

“Your whore mother failed me by dying and saddling me with you. Your frigid bitch step-mother failed me by never producing an actual son for me, and insisting on adopting you as her own. And you failed me by being a thin slip of nothing who will never inspire anything from anyone but laughter. How you managed to fool Sloane and Rax is beyond me, but you haven’t fooled me, Pryde or Brooks, you snivelling little _shit_!”

Young Armitage had stopped crying, his face gone blank and cold, his eyes dead, and Kylo could feel the cracks forming in his mind as his psyche broke a little more. He was slowly learning not to cry, not to feel, because it was weakness. 

In the cage, General Armitage was no longer looking at himself or his father. He had pressed his face into his hands and was shaking with the effort of trying not to cry. 

_I can’t help myself. I can’t help but see, hear you hurt me every time, and I can do. Nothing. I’m just as weak as you say I am, and I will never heal from what you’ve done to me. I will never grow or rise above the expectations of everyone who put themselves in my way. You made sure of that. You were right in that regard._

Kylo felt his stomach clench as he heard the defeat in Hux’s voice. 

“No.”

He felt the invisible grip crumble around him, and he fell forward. He stumbled, then was on his feet and running for the cage that held Hux captive. His lightsaber was out, and the blade snapped to life with a sputtering, crackling hiss, and he swiped through the bars.

Hux stared at him, disbelief written all over his flushed, tear streaked face, his reddened eyes wide. 

“Kylo?” he asked, his voice quiet with shock as Kylo grabbed his hand and helped him up. 

“You were screaming. I came to help,” Kylo said with a shrug. The less details he gave, the better. He didn’t need to make Hux feel worse, letting him know in the waking world, he was screaming and crying with Kylo’s skin under his teeth and nails as he was rocked and held in the dark of his room. 

Kylo would have loved to have been held like that long ago, but he doubted Hux would feel the same. Not right then, at least. There would be time to let him know he’d been safe and cared for later. Now? He had to get Hux on his feet and let him kill the past that was plaguing him. 

He hesitated, then turned off his lightsaber, and held it out to Hux.

Hux stared at the weapon, then at Kylo, then silently, shook his head. 

“No. I have to do this myself. You helped me get out, now I have to do the rest.” 

Kylo nodded, pleased, and put the weapon away, settling onto the ground, cross legged, to watch Hux take care of his past. 

Hux wiped his face, straightened his uniform, then strode forward with all the efficient precision that Kylo knew him capable of, and a stride that screamed ‘I am going to gut you if you don’t get out of my way.’ As he did so, his flicked his wrists, and a glittering blade appeared into each hand. 

Brendol Hux, too preoccupied with hitting, shaking and screaming at his child, didn’t see the grown version of the monster he’d created coming for him. 

His hands dropped young Armitage as the first blade slid home through skin, fat and muscle to pierce his kidney. He howled in pain and jerked away- though not before the General had wrenched the blade free and danced out of range of the older man’s thick, flailing fists. 

Brendol’s blue eyes went wide as he recognised the man his son had become, and the child he’d been abusing was forgotten. He let out a roar and lunged for Hux, who was grinning like a feral thing, his eyes glittering, pupils dilated, lips pulled back to show off his white, perfect teeth. 

“You never did try this with me when I was older and taller. Too afraid of me, Commandant?” Armitage taunted. “Were you only ever able to abuse me as a child because you were too weak to handle me once I’d passed puberty?”

Brendol roared and lunged at his adult son, the younger form of his son not even registering in his mind anymore. Young Armitage scuttled away, and seeing Kylo, hesitated. 

“It’s okay,” Kylo said, patting the ground beside him. “I’m a friend.” 

Young Armitage stumbled to his feet and fled to the safety of Kylo’s company, sitting just behind and beside him. He noticed Kylo’s lightsaber, and relaxed almost instantly, recognising he was safe. 

“Are you a Sith, then?” he asked, and Kylo was taken aback by how soft, how tired his voice was- it was the same voice Hux had as a fully grown adult with the entire First Order on his shoulders, just a few octaves higher. 

He’d stopped being a child before he’d even really had a chance to be one. Something Kylo related to all too well. 

“No, but I use a lightsaber and the Dark Side of the Force,” he said to the young boy. Young Armitage considered this, his eyes narrowed in thought, then nodded, satisfied. 

“As long as you aren’t a _Jedi_ ,” he all but sneered, even though his voice shook from the ordeal he’d just been rescued from. “Hypocrites of the galaxy who say they want to help people, but only perpetuate the suffering ordered by the Republic.”

This was definitely, unmistakably Armitage Hux as a ten year old, Ren decided. Who else would be this jaded and bitter? It did make him feel better about Hux’s disdain for the Force, though- it wasn’t personal, Armitage just hated Force users, or the Force in general. 

“Aren’t you going to help?” he asked. Kylo shook his head.

“He needs to do this himself, and I think you already know this, Armitage.”

The boy said nothing. He didn’t need to. 

They looked at the fight happening- or rather, the slaughter, as Armitage had overpowered Brendol, and was astride him, stabbing his father over and over. His greatcoat had been shed somewhere between his release from the cage and the fight with Brendol. His uniform was soaked in blood, his face spattered with it, his teeth still bared in that awful, predatory grimace. 

“You were always a brute. A lumbering, violent, brute,” he spat, slicing Brendol’s face open. “I don’t know why you always hit me when you know your words hurt me more than anything else you could do to me.” 

Brendol howled in agony as Armitage drove his knee into his father’s groin.

“I did badly to make the others look good, and I failed you. I succeeded, and I ruined your social aspects. You didn’t care about your pfassking _legacy_ , you only cared about driving me into the ground under your heel because you were such an ugly, oafish failure that no one would want to give you a legacy, so you made sure I was beaten down to the point where I might not have the desire to have my own!”

Brendol couldn’t answer- Hux had dropped his blades and was now wrapping his hands around his thick neck. 

“You raped my mother because no woman would _willingly_ have you otherwise! Maratelle _hated_ you! You were a political match and she couldn’t _stand_ being touched by you. I saw the look on her face when you had to share a glass at dinner, and she couldn’t bring herself to put her lips to the greasy film you left behind on the rim of the glass. I saw how she tried to stop herself from recoiling every time you put your meaty paws on her waist or lower back. I saw the abject _misery_ in her eyes any time you talked about how eventually you’d have a legitimate child with her.”

He was squeezing, and slamming the man’s head against the ground, but Brendol’s eyes remained focused, his body unresponsive- Hux was taking control of his dream, venting his anger and making sure at least one form of his father heard everything he had to say. 

“You never let me see my mother, and I had to learn from a smirking, gloating Pryde about how my mother pined herself to death because you took me away from her. You didn’t even _want me_ , but you took me away from the _one_ person on that rainy swamp ball that loved me!” Hux screamed into Brendol’s face.

“You mocked me, belittled me, spoke of me as if I were _nothing_ to adults. I was a _child_ not even in grade school and you called me _worthless_. How could I prove anything when I was not quite five years old? What had I done to deserve such cruelty, having to stand on the other side of closed doors listening to grown men and women laugh at me, about me, a child they’d never even seen, let alone met?”

Armitage let go of Brendol’s neck with one hand and punched him, hard, in the nose, breaking the bones. It was easy to do- Sloane had broken his nose so many times by the time Hux himself was seventeen. 

“You called me a girl, called me by that hateful name you gave me as a child until Sloane nearly killed you when she beat you into finally calling me Armitage, into saying I was a boy. Still, you never failed to remind me, or anyone else, that I wasn’t born with the parts you used to make me with a woman who had no agency to refuse you!”

He kept punching his father in the face, over and over. Brendol tried to reach up, to fight him off, and Armitage took the arm and over-extended it, the shoulder joint crunching, grinding and cracking. Brendol screamed, but not as loud as his son. 

“I tried everything and anything I could to be enough, to be your son, but it was never enough!” Armitage howled, getting up and kicking Brendol in his dislocated shoulder, then the ribs, then his side. Over and over, his polished durasteel-toe boots slammed into his father’s body. 

“It was never enough to get you to see me as worthy!” he cried. “I knew you’d never love me, but I just wanted to be worthy of being your _son_!”

“You took the troopers away from me,” Brendol spat, blood and teeth falling from his busted lips onto the ground. “Rax gave them to you like they were nothing, like my program was nothing, and then that bitch, Sloane, nearly killed me on a regular basis to keep me from taking them back. Had you running them, taking credit for my hard work, taking the First Order from me! It was **_MINE_** , it was _**ALWAYS**_ meant to be mine, and you took it from me!”

Armitage knelt beside his thrashing father, his face close to his. The blades were in his hands again. 

“I _am_ the First Order, Brendol. You are a corpulent waste of space, and my only regret is that I had Phasma kill you. Oh, it was so satisfying, watching you explode in that bacta tank, dissolve into nothing, the same nothing you always said I was, but I do wish I’d had the luxury of killing you with my bare hands.”

Armitage smiled. A closed mouth, tight lipped, icy cold smile.

“I will have to settle for killing you in my dreams. At least here, there is no one to know it was me.”

Brendol tried to grab at his son’s wrist, but the leather, slick with blood, couldn’t gain purchase, and Armitage laughed softly, derisively. 

“You got soft. Indolent. You relied too much on the relationships you had with your fellow Remnant officers instead of bettering yourself. All it did was get you killed, as it got Brooks killed.”

“You… you killed Brooks?” Brendol managed, and Armitage continued giving that cold, patronising smile. 

“Of course. He tried to have me killed, so I returned the favour- only difference is, I succeeded. He died, crying and snivelling in his own waste.”

Armitage put the blades to his father’s neck. 

“You’re worthless, and I’m done wasting my time. You never would have given me the time of day, never would have deemed me worthy, and you never would have loved me.”

His face was inches from Brendol’s.

“But I am worthy. I am succeeding where you failed. You, you led a few squadrons, an academy, and tortured children. Me? I will be the destroyer of entire _systems_ , and no one will remember your name, save for being the fat old fool who died from unknown causes in a bacta tank on an outdated Imperial Star Destroyer, another obsolete relics.” 

He made a vicious motion with his hands, and the blades sliced so cleanly, so deeply through Brendol’s neck, that he was nearly decapitated. Armitage flicked the blood from his blades and slid them back into place. 

“I surpassed you, and I destroyed you before you could ever destroy me. Worthless slob of a man,” he sneered. 

He walked away from Brendol’s corpse and picked up his coat, putting it back over his shoulders. He paused, seeing Kylo still sitting a distance away, the boy he’d once been beside him. 

Young Armitage was looking up at him with large, tear filled eyes, uncertainty all over his freckled face, but there was awe, too. He was awed by the figure of the tall blood splattered man in black with the greatcoat on his shoulders, the General’s rank on his cuffs- but also the masculine cut of his jaw and cheekbones, the flat plane of his chest, the way he held himself. 

Young Cadet Armitage was in awe of the _man_ he saw he’d become, not just the General. 

Kylo got up and moved away as Hux approached the boy that was himself. He gave them space, hoping this would be a turning point. 

Armitage knelt before his younger self, staring into his eyes before putting a bloody hand on his shoulder. 

“Is it true?” Young Armitage asked softly. “Is it true that you… I… we… surpassed him? Is it true we’re worthy?”

His tone spoke measures of his disbelief, and it hurt Kylo like a stab to the gut. 

“I’m General of the First Order’s armies, Armitage. The only person I answer to is the Supreme Leader. My only equal is Kylo Ren- that man, right there,” Armitage said, indicating Kylo. “Though, Captain Phasma is equal in my opinion- she isn’t the same rank, but I trust her.”

“So… we have friends?”

“Phasma is our friend, yes.”

He hesitated, then tilted his head and looked at Kylo. 

“And Kylo Ren is our friend, too. He’s saved our life twice now.”

The young cadet fidgeted, shuffling his feet. 

“Are we… do we…” he trailed off, fresh tears flowing. 

Armitage waited. He knew what was coming. 

“Are we worthy of being loved? Do we deserve it? Can we be loved? Even if I’m so skinny, so small and worthless?”

Hux drew his younger self into his arms and held him against his chest. The boy curled his fingers in his tunic as Armitage pressed his nose into the child’s soft red hair. Hot tears soaked the front of his tunic, and Armitage fought his own tears back as he cradled his own inner child. 

“We deserve love. Everyone deserves love, Armitage. I know it’s hard to see from where you are now, but you are worthy of love, you deserve love. Not in spite of how you were born, or how you look, but for all of it. I know it doesn’t always seem enough, but Sloane… Mother, she loves us, loves me, loves you. From what I learned growing up, our mother loved us so very, very much, even if she wasn’t in our lives,” he said quietly, his voice choking. 

“I’m a failure, though,” young Hux hiccuped into his adult self’s chest. “I disappoint everyone, or they think I’m a waste of space.” 

Armitage pulled back and lifted the boy’s chin gently. 

“Look at me, Armitage. Do I look like a waste of space?”

The boy shook his head.

“You’re a General! You look elegant, refined, and in control. Even when you were screaming and killing … him, you looked like you always had yourself under control! You couldn’t have been made General if you were worthless!”

“I am you, Armitage, but I think you know that,” Armitage said softly. “That means you aren’t a waste of space. You aren’t a failure. You aren’t a disappointment. The fault isn’t with you, it’s with Brendol and his foolish cabal of old men who refuse to let go of the past.” 

Young Armitage’s eyes welled over with tears again, and he pressed into the General’s chest. Armitage ran his hands over the boy’s back, hugging him tightly. 

“You did nothing wrong, Armitage. You’re surviving. It’s okay to hurt, it’s okay to cry. That doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re living. You aren’t failing if you’re living. Living means you haven’t let yourself down.”

“Thank you,” came the soft reply, and Hux looked down to see his inner child glowing, his face upturned to look into his own. He was smiling- sad, but hopeful. 

“It will be a while before I believe it, before I heal, but now, I have a place to start.”

Hux stared at his inner child, unsure what to say. 

“Can I go to sleep now? It’s your turn to be awake, I think, and I am very, very tired.”

Armitage smiled weakly and crushed the boy to his chest. 

“Sleep. Heal. I’ll keep you safe,” he said, throat tight. 

Kylo moved close and placed a hand on his shoulder, another on the boy’s back. 

“And I will keep the both of you safe,” he promised. 

Young Armitage smiled at Kylo, but it was very sad this time. 

“Next time, it’s your turn. You have a very sad spark in your heart, Kylo Ren,” he said ruefully. 

He started to fade, and pushed into Hux’s chest, disappearing as his glow abated, shrinking to a point above Hux’s heart before fading. Hux looked up at Kylo, unsure what to make of what had just happened, how to process what he was feeling.

It was the first time he’d felt this- the start of the healing process, of closure. 

“You saved me,” Hux said softly to Kylo. Kylo took Hux’s hand and helped him to his feet.

“It was necessary. You were poisoning yourself. Ready to wake up so you can tend to my wounds?”

Hux blinked. 

“Wounds?”

Kylo laughed. 

“You bit me.”

The world dissolve around them, so rapidly, that when Kylo opened his eyes, he was disoriented. Hux was in his lap, still clinging to him, but his nails and teeth were no longer embedded in his skin. Hux was blinking at him, looking at the bite mark he’d inflicted. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

Kylo used the Force to yank the small aftercare box from the nightstand. Hux caught it and immediately got to work, thoroughly cleaning the wound, applying bacta gel and wrapping it in bandages. He applied a few dots of bacta gel to the scratch marks, but grew frustrated as he couldn’t figure out how to bandage them properly. 

“Those are fine, don’t fret,” Kylo said, pushing the supplies back into the box and shutting it. 

“Thank you,” he said softly, already pulling the bottle of water and a tube of sleeping aids from the nightstand. He knew Hux wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep otherwise, and he was not going to let him get dressed and go to work after such an ordeal. 

Satisfied that Ren’s wounds were attended to, Hux took the pills and water from Ren, sighed and downed a single dose with half the bottle. He offered the other half to Ren, who downed it gratefully- he didn’t realise he’d been so thirsty. 

“Come here,” Hux said quietly, lying back down. He’d pulled Millie from under his pillow and had her resting against his chest. 

Kylo smiled and fished out Fang from under his own pillow- and Hux gave a smile that was a very restrained, but unmistakable flash of delight, knowing Kylo not only kept the stuffed Anooba, but brought it with him to stay the night. 

Kylo lay down beside Hux and pulled him close, putting Fang on his stomach. Hux smiled again as Kylo pulled the blankets over them both. He rolled onto his side, pulling the stuffed animals between them, their soft fabric pressing against both their chests. 

“Thank you,” Hux murmured. 

“I won’t ask if you’re okay, I know it’s not something you can answer right now,” Kylo said, stroking Hux’s hair and tangling his legs with Hux’s. “But I’m glad you got that catharsis.”

“It’s a start,” Hux said. “I’ve had that nightmare so many times, for so long, and each time, I’ve been powerless to help the child I once was. You helped me save myself.”

“You weren’t powerless, you just needed to be reminded you don’t have to do everything alone,” Kylo pointed out. 

“Says the man who doesn’t even talk about his past,” Hux retorted, but his tone was playful, albeit tired. Kylo snorted. 

“It’s not time for me to show you that. Not yet. I still have to figure out what I need to save, and what I need to kill before I can have you helping me rush in to save myself.”

Hux yawned and nuzzled into Kylo’s chest. 

“Well, when you do… I want to help you, if I can.” 

Kylo smiled in the dark.

“I appreciate it Armitage.”

Hux dozed off, carried away by the sleep meds, and for the first time since Kylo had been sleeping in the same room as Hux, he didn’t have any nightmares. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering who Millie and Fang are, please read "Frivolous Sentimentality" in this series!


End file.
